5 Rules of High Performers

Imagine a friend of yours is trying to get back in shape. Every day, he heads to the gym, completes a workout, follows a good diet.

Then the two of you go on vacation.

He tries to keep up the routine. The first morning, he makes it to the resort gym and fumbles around, trying to figure out substitute exercises for his usual routine. Eventually, he gives up and returns to the pool bar for a round of margaritas to ease the pain and embarrassment of failure.

The first scenario—a home diet and daily gym routines—is built for proactive high performance. The second describes a reactive scene of struggle and loss.

Similar scenarios play out every day in your quest for high-performance at work and home. If you get soft and lazy, try to “wing it” without a plan, and wake up unproductive and reactive, you’ll struggle, lose your momentum, and possibly quit on your goals.

But if you are proactive, plan ahead, and follow the playbook of a high-performer, you can crush the competition and dominate every day.

How? By building high-performance habits of steel.

Start with these Five Rules of High-Performers and don’t miss out on a single day of making massive progress towards your big goals and dreams.

Rule #1 – Harness Your Champion Mindset

We’ve all been champions at one or more points in our lives. You might have been a state sports champion, a top bodybuilder, an amazing ‘“before-and-after” exercise model, head of your fraternity or sorority, star of the school play, or the valedictorian of your class. Or maybe you married out of your league.

Somewhere along the line, your plan came together and you rose to the top. That means you already have a champion mindset inside of you. To get to the next level in life, you simply need to harness the power of your championship principles.

These winning principles are simple. I’ve seen them work time after time for thousands of people in many different industries. I call them the Five Pillars of Success:

1. Better Planning and Preparation Than Ever Before

2. Professional Accountability (your “coach”)

3. Positive Social Support (your “cheerleaders”)

4. A Meaningful Incentive

5. The BIG Deadline

When you have these pillars in place, you can win CrossFit games, write your first book, or build a seven-figure coaching program.

Rule #2 – Make Time Magic and Make Deadlines

If you’ve read my book, “The Perfect Day Formula,” you’ve heard the phrase “magic time.” This is the two-hour block of the day where you are three times more productive than usual. For many, like myself, magic time is in the morning. Case in point: I wrote this article in one session between 4:05 a.m. and 6:15 a.m.

When you find your “magic time,” you need to ruthlessly foster it and protect it from the time thieves in your life (phone calls, social media, alcohol, junk food, etc.).

Once you find your magic time, you need to supercharge it with a deadline. A deadline helps a high performer get stuff done in record time. How? It ignites inertia, keeps us going through the middle of a tough project when we know we’re in the homestretch, and pushes us to work harder and faster the closer we get to the finish line.

Rule #3 – Today’s To-Do List is for Tomorrow

One of the biggest mistakes potential high-performers make is waiting until the morning to create a to-do list. If you are making your to-do list in the morning, you are already too late. The list needs to be done the night before so you can wake up and get right to work.

Here’s a two-step plan for finishing your day correctly and starting tomorrow with a big win:

First, at the end of your workday, grab a scrap piece of paper and do what I call “a brain dump.” Write down all of the crazy thoughts running through your head—including the things you want to do the next day, all the people you need to contact, and all the obstacles in your way.

There you go—tomorrow has been conquered today. Planning ahead is a high-performer’s secret to success.

Rule #4 – Create an Insanely Clear and Concise Vision

I’ve never watched a Harry Potter movie or a read a Potter book, but I may have discovered something most people didn’t know about J. K. Rowling.

As it turns out, Rowling is a talented artist. Prior to writing the Potter books, she sketched incredibly detailed pictures of her characters in various scenes. She had a clear vision of what she wanted her words to portray.

High performers do this for their lives.

In my workshops and at my Perfect Life Retreat, I take my coaching clients through an extensive vision creation process. It eliminates the clutter in your mind, giving you complete clarity on what matters in your life and how to achieve exactly what you want.

Once you’ve created your vision, you can start putting your daily high-performance habits in place. These are the tools that will bring you faster results in every area of your life.

Just like you can’t build a house without blueprints, you can’t get what you want without a vision.

If you are making your to-do list in the morning, you are already too late. The list needs to be done the night before so you can wake up and get right to work.

Rule #5 – Model Other High Performers

After working with over 5,000 coaching clients, I still see the need for better tools and techniques that eliminate self-doubt—not to mention temptations, obstacles, and external negativity. These are the things that are really holding you back.

That’s why I’d like to invite you to my Perfect Life Retreat on November 9-10 in San Diego.

You’ll join me, Lewis Howes, Carrie Wilkerson, Bedros Keuilian, and over 200 other high performers across dozens of industries (from Hollywood actors to female entrepreneurs to New York Times best-selling authors).

Over the two-day retreat, we’ll do a deep dive into the habits of high performers, installing them in your life so you can finally achieve the success you deserve.

But this isn’t another seminar where you sit through lecture after lecture and leave with 40 pages of notes that you never end up using.

Instead, after we create the roadmap (vision) for your life, we’ll spend the rest of the time working through concrete action plans so that you leave with most of the work done—and momentum for success already building. You’ll walk away with a crystal clear action plan to achieve exactly what you want in life.

Plus, our team is doing something for you that you’ve never experienced at any other event.

As a recovering introvert, I know how difficult networking can be—even when you’re in a room of positive high-performers. That’s why our team is spending dozens of hours making your connections in advance.

We’ll give you a done-for-you list of who you need to meet (and why), so that you can make big-money connections easily and automatically. If even a fraction of the 100+ events I attended in the past had done this, I’d be exponentially more successful than I am today.

If you want to be a high-performer; if you want to live out a champion mindset in every area of your life; if you want to meet the writers, coaches, and speakers that you’ve looked up to for years; and if you want to get a proven blueprint that gives you faster results, then you can’t miss out on the first ever Perfect Life Retreat.

Last thing: Lewis Howes, our guest speaker, twisted my arm and made me keep open my BOGO (buy one, get one) offer. That means when you register today that you get to bring a high-performer friend for free.

Take advantage of this deal today:

The Perfect Life Retreat, November 9-10

The secret to achieving the Perfect Life is just a step away. Buy your ticket now and get 1 seat free!

Craig Ballantyne is the author of The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day and Control Your Life. Craig has been a contributor to Men's Health magazine for over 17 years. Today he teaches his gift high-performing entrepreneurs how to squeeze more out of their days, increase their income, and make more quality time for their families in his Perfect Life Workshop and Work-Life Mastery programs. Craig used his own advice to overcome crippling anxiety attacks in 2006, and he'll teach you his 5 Pillars of Success so you can increase your income, decrease your work time, and live the life of your dreams. Learn more about Craig at craigballantyne.com

Enjoy guests like Lewis Howes, Bedros Keuilian, Brad Pilon, Carrie Wilkerson, and other inspirational entrepreneurs and authors. Plus, get insider tips on how to make the most of your mornings, kickstart your productivity, and set goals you can actually achieve!

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Early To Rise delivers science-based systems and structures to help people achieve a higher level of performance. We share proven strategies for success and help our readers steer clear of fads, gimmicks, and frauds. This ensures a win-win relationship between our readers and ETR, and creates faster results for everyone.